Valour FC, Winnipeg’s new pro soccer outfit, takes to the pitch on Thursday for its fifth game in 16 days, easily the most demanding early-season run of any in the seven-team loop.

Perhaps the person drawing up the Canadian Premier League’s inaugural calendar had an old score to settle with Valour boss Rob Gale.

“I’ll reserve opinion for how I feel,” Gale said on Wednesday, managing to keep a smile on his face while nearly biting his tongue in two. “You have to deal with it. As we’ve said, no excuses. There will be congested times of the season, there will be time off.”

Congested? Gale’s gang has hardly been able to take a breath.

The five days since Valour last played, a 1-0 win over Halifax here, Saturday is, by far, their longest break to date.

Gale stopped short of calling it a luxury, though, as he prepared to watch his players drag themselves through another practice.

“Not really,” he said. “Because it’s a cumulative effect. So with each extra game and travel – it’s been nice to be home, no doubt about it, and give them an actual day off. But still you can see they’re getting the legs back under them, Monday, even yesterday, trying to get that sharpness.”

An even 2-2 with four goals scored and four scored against it, Valour will need every bit of sharpness on Thursday against Hamilton’s Forge FC.

Forge may only sport a 1-2-1 mark – their first five games have come in a relatively breezy 20-day span – but they were the pre-season pick of this new litter by those in the know.

“They should rightly be considered the frontrunners,” Gale acknowledged. “If you’ve watched the games, they’ve done well, they’ve created chances and had a couple of sucker-punches against them. So it will be a good test.”

Valour will try to deliver a steady diet of blows against the team that plays the most similar style to its own.

“We’re less of a direct team,,” is how midfielder Louis Beland-Goyette put it. “We don’t play long balls the whole game. We try to play from the back, play from side to side, to go on the attack. I watched their last game and I could see the same type of possession going forward for them.”

Thanks to the unique setup of the CPL, this is is no early-season test that won’t be critical in the standings when all is said and done.

The season is divided into a 10-game spring schedule and an 18-game fall campaign, with the winners of each – or, if the same team wins both “halves,” the top two teams overall – squaring off for the first league championship.

So with the Winnipeg squad in second place, behind only Calgary’s Cavalry FC at 3-0, Thursday’s match to kick off the second half of the first half looms rather large.

“I’ve never experienced it before,” English defender Adam Mitter was saying a few days back. “We just have to embrace it. As we said before the season, probably six or seven wins wins you the title, which is crazy.”

It also puts coaches in an interesting position.

On one hand, they want to get their teams to peak by the end of the season. On the other, the first 10 games can get you into the championship.

So do you rest players for the long haul, or go all-out with your best lineup right now?

“We want to peak every time the whistle blows for kickoff,” Gale said. “Over the course of a season the team that’s the most consistent wins championships. That’s why you have a champion and there’s no playoffs.”

Well, almost no playoffs. Just two teams, winner take all.

By then, Valour may even be rested.

Actually, they’ll be rested in two weeks.

The only thing more ridiculous than their hectic start is the fact Valour’s next game after Thursday isn’t until June 1.

That’s a long time to savour a winning record – or stew over a losing one.